This is an aside, and feel free to put it on its own thread, Tom, but over the last week the intrepid team of Fitzcrow-Harrison-Simon et al. were at a non-fundraiser (yeah, right) hosted jointly by the Wyoming TNC and the ARK TNC (can you spell "nice vacation on the company dime"?). There were buffalo dinners and presentations by the mighty Fitzcrow where, it was reported to this Non-believer (I left skeptic behind long ago), that Dr. Fitzcrow banged loudly and firmly on the IBWO drum.
He didn't mention the skeptics until asked. Rather, his current position seems to be that when you look at all the evidence that there is NO DOUBT that there are IBWO in ARK. He is now focusing NOT on the video, but rather on the flap rate and the audio recordings.
Now, they presented the audio as inconclusive, so I'm not sure how he wrangles out of that, but it must be good.
The Fraudulent piece here, and I mean FRAUD, is the fact that he is still presenting a film frame of the old IBWO, then playing the audio - and NOT TELLING THE AUDIENCE that the two (film and audio) are form different sources. The audience thought the audio of the flap rate came off the movie.
It is important to remember that their measure of IBWO flap rates come from an audio only, with no field notes, so we don't even know for sure that the flapping sound is an IBWO. If it was, we don't know what it was doing - fleeing, defending, fluttering, basking. No one knows.
He went on to say that people can blurr the wing patterns all they want, but the flap rate can't be wrong. Arghhhhh. Of course it can be wrong with a freakin sample size of 1! Of course it can be wrong, because the bird in the video is a PIWO. He is actually able to stand there and claim he is bring that bird back from the dead with this sort of evidence.
By linking the film image with the audio he is planting the idea in people's heads that he knows the species, and behaviour - and that is WRONG, snake-oily and WRONG. And to Fitzcrow and your minions,(yeah, we know you read it) shame on you!
This is High Powered Snake Oil - and these guys need to be taken down.
I feel I need a poem to lower the blood pressure...anybody got one?
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
"These guys need to be taken down"
In case you missed it--"Methinks" posted this in the comment section yesterday:
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15 comments:
I understand that the report is second hand so there could be some confusion here, help me if I've got this wrong: In order to discuss flap rates you must say that the Luneau field marks are totally inconclusive, but the Luneau flap rate is not. That's what I'm hearing yes?
This is where I think some of us have been far too polite. We've assumed that by gently saying, "Well, the field marks COULD be Pileated", no one gets embarrassed and CLO will be forced to accept the more likely explanation.
But the field marks in Luneau are not "hopeless" and not "ambiguous". They are completely consistent with PIWO and definitively inconsistent with IBWO. We've all got our hobby horses here, and one of mine is certainly the complete absence of white on the upstroke. The fieldmarks in Luneau are NOT IBWO.
It's been a mistake to pull punches and politely call the the Luneau field marks "ambiguous", thinking that would be enough to topple the "evidence". It's provided an opening, that we've now learned, is an opening CLO will risk taking. I think it's quite a risk.
p.d.
methinks that now you should relax
these hucksters soon will get the ax
for they talk smack about the bird
and make up stuff just to be heard
their science is as weak as moby
their hair is badly cut by flowbee
fishcrow is mad, magic guy - crazy
their ID skills are just plain lazy
they find Lord God in every swamp
they use stealth and do not stomp
they are alone and that is telling
is it just me or is something smelling?
Until the day I see the bird
I won't believe the crap I've heard
But I for one, would believe Dave
if he found a bird even in a cave
In a cave or in a hollow
the birders then would surely follow
They snap a pic or a tape some vids
They'd write it up and tell their kids.
Of the glorious day we found a ghost
a desired bird, perhaps the most.
This website then might fall from grace.
we'd waste our time some other place.
So thanks methinks, for getting mad.
the evidence she's scantily clad
We see right through its filmy lace
there's no substance. No not a trace
Ambiguous field marks can prove the existence of a bird that hasn't been unambiguously documented in the wild over the course of 60 years of intense searching?
That's bullshit.
If Methinks' story is true, Fishcrow is a truly vile human being who rightfullly deserves a toilet seat right next to Kent Hovind and the creationist slimeballs at the Discovery Institute.
Intentionally misprepresenting information information and omitting crucial facts is fraud. It's lying. It's sick.
Tom, I'm okay too with the folks that want to believe that there are IBWP's. But, here we have a real problem that damages science and conservation proper. If someone is a professional and tinkering with grafting evidence together from different sources and presenting the whole mess as sequential or simultaneous then this is a serious problem. At this juncture I'd have to agree that folks need to be taken to task for this. It has been humorous at times. However, the dubious video and a totally separate audio being paired and presented as conclusive evidence doesn't rate ANY standard of proof, be it legal or scientific. Therefore, assertions of fact based on flimsy material that no one can agree upon opens a Pandora's Box for science unless someone directly challenges this fellow. This is NOT science. It's not even "more likely than not." It's deliberate deception.
I know this is not directly relevant to this particular comment section, but I suggest people (who are looking for some comedy) check out the following:
http://www.birdforum.net/showpost.php?p=657651&postcount=5922
Everyone's favourite comedian (and IBWO expert) has finally spiralled completely out of control and appears to be developing some sort of 'deity complex'. It should be amusing to see where this all leads.
Yes, that is my new favorite Collins post. A friend suggests that by reading his day to day diary of his search you can see a classic case history of manic-depression. (or maybe she said bi-polar). Maybe we should give the poor guy a break. I see him down in Florida some day, having a drink with Bill "That Magic Guy" talking about how they know more than Tanner ever did.
I take it back.
Here's the best
I thought Galagher misrepresented the facts in a presentation to a bird club earlier this year.
He's telling the story of how he and Bobby are coming down the bayou through Cache after Gene has gone on ahead and the he says something like "And then ...." and he shows a slide with a detailed painting of an IBWO flying through the swamp with full fieldmarks along the lines of the Chandler painting (it might have been the Chandler painting). He never showed his field notes sketch of what he actually saw (and what he didn't see: a head, a tail, dorsal stripes, white primaries...). I don't remember him describing what he did or didn't see either (I may have missed that but I don't think so.) I guess you could grant him some creative license for that type of presentation but I thought it was a misrepresentation.
Sorry for the repost, but I couldn't resist the juxtaposition of poetry and fishcrow:
There once was a bloke from the navy.
Caught a fever that made him quite crazy.
With footage like hell,
he's the spawn of Cornell.
Log God Bird rolled over, screamed "Save Me!"
Okay,umm.....still, isn't the melding of the two separate bodies of evidence an example of fraud? I believe that the transgression is fairly serious.
Back to the original post, isn't it fairly obvious that the film frame and audio are from 2 different sources? It's a single frame of a bird and audio, not a movie of a bird and audio. I'm not versed on the details of parabolic reflectors wrt their field of view but I'm willing to accept Cornell's assessment of the wing flaps being of an IBWO if the reflector recorded a pair of IBWOs earlier on the tape/"film". I'd want to learn a lot about parabolic reflectors and listen to the full recording audio before challenging that.
But I agree that that only gives you a sample size of 1 for IBWO and a video in every other regard is almost certainly a PIWO. Arguing that the evidence is conclusive from a sample size of 1 versus a sample size of 5 seems highly questionable if not unethical. Some effort in sampling PIWOs should be able to clear up this matter. Not that I expect Cornell to be the one to undertake that effort, though if that's what they're resting this argument on, that would be the path of scientific integrity. What will Cornell do?
Even if we gather info on PIWO flap rates, so what? IBWO flap rate is undetermined and will always be so if n continues to equal 1.
Here is what I would ask at any Cornell presentation.
Assuming the audio on flap rates is an IBWO you then have one value for IBWO flap rate. Doesn't this preclude you from making any statements about flap rate differences between the two species?
anonymous said:
"Even if we gather info on PIWO flap rates, so what?"
If a PIWO is recorded with a flap rate of ~8.5 flaps/sec then it takes away the argument "Luneau's bird can't be a PIWO because PIWOs don't/can't flap that fast, therefore it must be an IBWO." Prove that a PIWO can flap that fast and Cornell is clearly left with just their inconclusive audio. The corner they have painted themselves into gets smaller and smaller.
Yeah they shouldn't make statements about flap rate differences based on the data, but they have and I suspect will continue to do so until proven wrong. If we're convinced a PIWO can flap that fast then it should be possible to clearly videotape a PIWO flapping that fast.
If a PIWO is recorded with a flap rate of ~8.5 flaps/sec
I believe it has been ... on the Luneau video.
Hmm, methinks this is beginning to sound more like a personal vendetta by my alter ego than a quest for scientific truth...
METHINKS II
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